Renewable trade wars: green mercantilism and the threat to innovation

Other countries undercutting the US on PV sales complicates a renewable future.

The US renewable energy industry is suffering at the hands of overseas competitors who are refusing to play fair, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation claims in a new report. By using "unfair" practices, countries including China, India, and Brazil are threatening both the USA's renewable technology sector and the future of renewable energy at large.

Protectionist policies such as import tariffs are just one type of "green mercantilism" described in the report, with IP theft, currency manipulation, export dumping (flooding the export market with discount goods) and forced technology transfer (the handing over of advanced technology to another country in exchange for access to its domestic market) are among other methods employed.

Solar wars

Violating "the spirit or the letter" of WTO law, such policies contributed to the relative collapse of US solar exports, the report's authors argue. "The United States watched its first-generation solar PV export market share fall from 30 percent to 7 percent in under a decade while China's grew from two percent to 55 percent," co-author Matthew Stepp wrote in an email to Ars.
Recent months have seen counter-salvos from the US in what is fast becoming a trade war with China. In May, the Department of Commerce announced a 30-percent minimum tariff on Chinese solar imports in response to a petition by the Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing (CASM) which claimed China had swamped the US market with illegally discounted goods. US PV imports from China decreased 64 percent during April in anticipation of the tariff.

On Tuesday, CASM, which has 210 member companies, warned that importers evading tariffs on Chinese solar cells and panels may be guilty of "conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud the United States," and there are signs that US Customs and Border Protection is preparing to play hardball with infringing importers.

Such combative measures aren't universally welcomed. As far back as December, Jigar Shah of the Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy (CASE) wrote to SolarWorld, a member of CASM, asking the company to withdraw its petition on the grounds that it threatened the $60 billion "pipeline" of planned solar installations. In a strongly worded response, SolarWorld's Gordon Brinser dismissed Shah as a mouthpiece of Chinese solar manufacturers at large.

The threat to innovation

If it's a case of a chasm between CASM and CASE, then the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation stands firmly on CASM's side. The report does acknowledge the merits of the argument that in undercutting US manufacturers, China is effectively subsidizing the US with cheap renewable technology (and therefore the associated services and jobs). This will spur renewable energy proliferation which will in turn lead to lower energy prices. The report argues, however, that this consumer-oriented view is short-termist. The bigger picture is the stifling of innovation which spells a grim long-term prognosis for the entire renewable industry.

The report's logic is that a renewable sector in which low cost is king has little to no incentive to innovate. And further innovation is crucial if renewable technologies are to surpass fossil fuels on a dollar per watt basis. The report cites MIT research into the cost effectiveness of PV, which must achieve a cost of $0.50 per peak watt without subsidies in order to compete with coal–a target requiring "advanced concepts not currently in industry roadmaps," according to the MIT study.

"If the goal is to create a global energy system that is largely carbon free, continual dependence on subsidies, whether domestic and legitimate or foreign and mercantilist, is not the way. Driving innovation is," the report finds.

The implications for "green mercantilism" go well beyond both China and the solar industry, Stepp argues. "Now many countries are increasingly using green mercantilist practices to spur similar rapid growth in wind turbines, biofuels, energy storage, and electric vehicles," he writes, while the report cites examples of wind subsidies in Vietnam, the E-FACE program in Japan, and tax relief for biodiesel producers in Brazil.

Counter-mercantilism?

But are the tariffs imposed by the Department of Commerce (at CASM's behest) a sensible response? Doesn't such counter-mercantilism have the potential to escalate the problem? "The US solar industry (or at least the manufacturers that were party to the petition) were justified to have brought the case because of unfair Chinese policy support of their domestic industry, and tariffs are the proper response in the immediate to level the playing field," Stepp told Ars.

"Tariffs are the proper response in all cases of green mercantilist policies because not only do they hurt U.S. domestic industries, they harm the global communities ability to innovate," he added.

Though Stepp admits counter-tariffs have the potential to escalate matters, aggressive mercantilist responses are the only way to level the field of play. A technological optimist might argue that were the US to focus solely on innovation, its renewable technology could leap ahead of competitors hawking the same old cut-price wares. Ars put this to Stepp.

"In order for the U.S. to out-innovate, it must still prosecute green mercantilist policies. To give an example, China's dominating first generation silicon-based solar PV. But the US has been a leader in second generation thin-film solar technologies and is currently investing significantly in third and fourth generation solar designs that use nanotechnologies. What's to stop China from simply doing what it's doing now in first generation solar to next-generation solar? Why wouldn't they just use practices like forced technology transfer, barriers to market access, etc., to gain a foothold in those advanced industries and unfairly subsidize and export dump their way to market dominance?"

A silver bullet?

But innovation is crucial, Stepp argues. The report characterizes the renewable industry's situation as a choice between an innovation-driven race to the top versus a subsidies-driven race to the bottom. Only the former will permit the global renewable industry meet its potential for growth, projected to be $2.2 trillion in the coming decades.

The authors call for a global adoption of "good" renewable energy policy which will benefit both individual nations and the global renewable industry. Such policy includes education and skills training, fair and competitive trading and research funding–but it's the latter that seems to be key.

International agreement on climate change could provide the impetus needed to put the focus of renewable industries back onto innovation. The report proposes that nations be offered the choice between reducing greenhouse gas emissions or increasing their research into clean energy technology. "Setting even a modest target like 0.065 percent of nation's GDP devoted to clean energy RD&D would increase public investments in innovation by $40 billion annually, assuming most countries agree to the targets," the report asserts.

Such an agreement could follow the model of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) established in 1996. Though such agreements are not without their complications, the authors argue that a Clean Technology Agreement would eliminate tariffs that would increase the demand for clean energy, while fostering a more harmonious clean energy market.

But without such an agreement in place it would seem that mercantilism begets mercantilism. And while some argue that that may be good for clean energy advancement, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation strenuously begs to differ.

The full report, entitled Green Mercantilism: Threat to the Clean Energy Economy and co-written by Matthew Stepp and Robert D. Atkinson, is available from the ITIF website.

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James Holloway
James is a contributing science writer. He's a graduate of the Open University, with a B.Sc. in Technology and a Diploma in Design and Innovation. Twitter@jamesholloway

62 Reader Comments

It is not that the regulators did not see this coming!. It was all planned to stall the wide-spread use of solar panels so that the oil cartels can milk every last drop of their oil reserves.

Also, due to the absurdly low wages in China, no other country can really compete with it in terms of price. They can pull raw materials from the earth way cheaper than anybody can. So if the rest of the world is going to just sit there because they are not competitive enough to check to see what government and the WTO, UN is doing to improve the situation rather than sit on it and say "nothing we could do!".

There is such thing as innovation and protecting your IP. Look at Corning with Gorilla glass. They have just ONE factory in the USA doing all the sheets for all the smartphones and tablets out there and China just CANNOT seem to copy this as yet!. So how did Corning do it ?. There is a secret there worth understanding!.

Hi, i'm from Brazil and dont agree about tax relief for biodiesel. Here, since 1976 we plant sugar-cane to produce Ethanol, in our gasoline has about 25% of Ethanol, we don't use plumblun (Pb) on gasoline since 1976. Here has 20.000.000 (twenty million) cars that can use gasoline and Ethanol. Our sugar-cane farmers don´t receive subsidies, neither ours soya-bean producers, about 80% of our biodiesel came from soya-bean. Biodiesel helps pay the farmers, and help substitute 153,236,459 millions diesel gallons that came from imports.But is sad to see that this attack came from a publication that i liked, in a country who pays high subsidies to corn producers, tax our ethanol in about 50 %, attack our biodiesel, and criticized our Hydraulic energy. We are in vanguard of biofuels, green energy, florest preservation, but this dont appear on publications, dont sale pappers.

There is such thing as innovation and protecting your IP. Look at Corning with Gorilla glass. They have just ONE factory in the USA doing all the sheets for all the smartphones and tablets out there and China just CANNOT seem to copy this as yet!. So how did Corning do it ?. There is a secret there worth understanding!.

"The report's logic is that a renewable sector in which low cost is king has little to no incentive to innovate. And further innovation is crucial if renewable technologies are to surpass fossil fuels on a dollar per watt basis. The report cites MIT research into the cost effectiveness of PV, which must achieve a cost of $0.50 per peak watt without subsidies in order to compete with coal–a target requiring "advanced concepts not currently in industry roadmaps," according to the MIT study."

How is lowering the cost of manufacture not innovation? Id say if low cost is king, there is lots of incentive to innovate.

I am not sure I get this. I mean does it really make economic sense to drive out the competition by selling at great loss? I'd like to see some economist crunch the numbers on the Chinese strategy of undercutting the western companies on price until they are bust. Then they buy those bust companies at a low price and get their advance technology. Now they move up the chain and undercut other companies. When all the competition is dead they jack up the prices and make lots of profit.

If this really made economic sense I would have assumed that other companies did this.

This happens quite often. When Toyota decided it was time to compete in the luxury market, they sold their Lexus brand at a severely lower cost than competing Mercedes and BMW vehicles. Toyota of course never admitted to it, but anyone that looks at their initial vehicle pricing based on region and the relatively quicker increase in price compared to other luxury models makes it seem pretty obvious. Sell low to get in the market, and once you have them hooked you start raising the prices to get your ROI back.

China did the same thing with rare earth compounds. They sold items like cerium oxide at prices so low nobody could compete. After the shut down of several companies offering other sources of rare earth compounds guess what happened? Can you guess? Well let me tell you in case you can't comprehend what would happen. The prices went up so far that many of the businesses that use cerium oxide went belly up. The prices went super high except for the Chinese companies that use cerium oxide in the glass industry and other sectors. Of course China tried to do the same thing in the glass industry but their quality was so low that they haven't been able to succeed in that criminal venture. The other sources for cerium oxide are starting to come back around now so maybe things may get better. If you think that the playing field is level then you have no sense of what is going on. People should learn something about what they are commenting about so they won't look so clueless.This is my opinion based on facts and therefore not open for debate.

American renewable energy sector is not the only one losing out because of China. I had stocks in REC, a Norwegian solar cell producer. Now most of that money is gone, because they say it is almost impossible to compete with Chinese manufactureres because they sell Solar cells for less than the price of raw material. Similar thing is apparently happening in Denmark. Their windpower industry is getting whiped out by the Chinese.

I am not sure I get this. I mean does it really make economic sense to drive out the competition by selling at great loss? I'd like to see some economist crunch the numbers on the Chinese strategy of undercutting the western companies on price until they are bust. Then they buy those bust companies at a low price and get their advance technology. Now they move up the chain and undercut other companies. When all the competition is dead they jack up the prices and make lots of profit.

If this really made economic sense I would have assumed that other companies did this.

The problem is that the Chinese companies doing this is fine in China. But this is illegal and has been for a very long time in the US and in most parts of Europe. It's predatory capitalism and it kills the market. The Chinese are not just doing this in the RE market either but in lots of different fields. The ITC and the WTO need to clamp down hard on this but nothing will be resolved until they do.

Rather than the evil communists cheating (how else could they do well?) maybe it's the US's fault for not competing.

I hope you aren't suggesting that US companies and Chinese companies are competing on a level playing field?

Are you suggesting that the US should be able to compete against a country with a nearly endless supply or raw materials and cheap labour? Should the US also be able to compete with other counties in banana production?

The fact is some nations have natural advantages in certain industries and there's no such thing as a level playing field. The rest of the world accepts this and imports products from places that can produce them more efficiently, but somehow it gets labelled by the US as unfair or illegal competition.

Yes, but when China has systemic human abuse and is literally pillaging the ground to a barren wasteland that is beyond unfair. Some things just cannot be allowed.

The article does not explain at all what China did illegally or unfairly to subsidize solar cells and PV panels.All I see is that the USA unilaterally has an import tax for these items of over 250%!!!, which I would think is illegal with the WTO. If the only advantage that China has is cheap products and cheap labor, then this is the normal state and the USA cannot penalize China with 250% import duties, because the same applies to every other industrial and commercial sectors.

So what exactly is the 250% import duty in response for? What exact "dumping" and "vailing" is there?How is a 250% import tax legal or possible in WTO context, what WTO rule is China breaking?Why are some Chinese companies authorized to export PV panels with only a 31% import tax but all others are on the 250% rate? This hardly looks fair.

Reading the article, I don't see anything that justifies the 250% tax or that justifies CASM vs. CASE, but it looks like there is more to it.

The article does not make it 100% clear but I have read and studied this before. The Chinese companies are stealing the technology. Either using bogus contracts or bait-and-switch to get the tech into their doors, they then afterwards get the tech from the originating company and start selling it as their own. It's not just American companies either, hence the comments above about the Dutch and Norwegian RE companies getting f*cked also.

Over the past two years, I've noticed the cost of installing solar has dropped tremendously. Being a cynic, I thought the reason was the federal subsidisies ending for home owners - thus the solar installers were unable to gouge home owners and the government, anymore and they had to lower their pricing to stay in business.

I guess I'm was wrong... I really have to thank the Chinese for making solor affordable? Thank you, China.

Over the past two years, I've noticed the cost of installing solar has dropped tremendously. Being a cynic, I thought the reason was the federal subsidisies ending for home owners - thus the solar installers were unable to gouge home owners and the government, anymore and they had to lower their pricing to stay in business.

I guess I'm was wrong... I really have to thank the Chinese for making solor affordable? Thank you, China.

Subsidies to homeowners and businesses help, but China's artificially low prices on PV panels means they can sell them for less than even the cost of the materials if need be, and drive competing manufacturers in other nations out of business. The Commerce Department has been investigating the issue and while their conclusion is that it's not so simple as just China's pricing, that is a factor. The US should have a slight advantage if the solar industry in China wasn't so heavily subsidized.

Hi, i'm from Brazil and dont agree about tax relief for biodiesel. Here, since 1976 we plant sugar-cane to produce Ethanol, in our gasoline has about 25% of Ethanol, we don't use plumblun (Pb) on gasoline since 1976. Here has 20.000.000 (twenty million) cars that can use gasoline and Ethanol. Our sugar-cane farmers don´t receive subsidies, neither ours soya-bean producers, about 80% of our biodiesel came from soya-bean. Biodiesel helps pay the farmers, and help substitute 153,236,459 millions diesel gallons that came from imports.But is sad to see that this attack came from a publication that i liked, in a country who pays high subsidies to corn producers, tax our ethanol in about 50 %, attack our biodiesel, and criticized our Hydraulic energy. We are in vanguard of biofuels, green energy, florest preservation, but this dont appear on publications, dont sale pappers.

Another example of why market distortion is bad. Subsidies and tariffs just hinder free trade of goods from countries which can better produce them efficiently to countries which can't, and encourage countries which can't produce them efficiently to continue to waste their resources doing so instead of reallocating them to something they're better at producing.

The most notable result of market distortion in the daily life of the average American is the presence of high-fructose corn syrup in everything, instead of the cane sugar which used to be there. High tariffs on foreign sugar plus subsidies for American corn has led to this strange situation, where Americans take a crop it's very hard to get sugar from (and infeasible to get sucrose from), and extract a less-desirable sugar for industrial use, instead of just using the cheap cane sugar everyone else in the rest of the world uses. And then on top of that, consumers have to pay almost $4 billion more than they would otherwise each year for sucrose anyway, since liquid corn syrup is far less desirable for home use.

And then, on top of that, the taxpayers pay direct subsidies to the small American cane sugar and beet sugar growing industry. And then on top of that, the taxpayers pay to purchase "excess" sugar which might drive down prices (the prices those same taxpayers pay), and sell it at a loss to ethanol producers. Insanity.

Market distortions are just inherently bad and lead to more market distortions. Eliminating any tariff or subsidy is thus an inherent good. Advocating the imposition of a new one, as this Ars article basically does by giving more coverage to arguments of one side of the debate, is thus inherently bad.

Sergei, a few thoughts. As to your initial volley of appeal to authority, yes I've read a handful of Friedman's works (and appealing to him personally instead of the larger field of economics he contributed to is a little weird anyway), so we can get the baby's-first-macro-class crap out of the way.

I absolutely agree with you when it comes to the sugar industry, it's a damn shame that it's continuing. I think you're overstating your position when it comes to this, though.

What I don't think you're respecting enough is the amount of public R&D that needs to be pumped into literally any groundbreaking technological industry to make it really work. There are numerous industries--aerospace, anything with a microchip, and yes, renewable energy--where the only person with enough cash and no need for a return in the next 2 quarters is the taxpayer. "Blue sky research," which is desirable in every way, is not a good bet for any single company to make. It's a kind of inverse tragedy of the commons--instead of everyone taking advantage of something, nobody's going to disadvantage themselves by taking the risk that they'll pour millions into setting up a lab that produces nothing marketable. Universities, on the other hand, using grants from the government, do this all the time. By taxing the population to fund them, it spreads the risk over the entire market. That's how breakthroughs (and many, many useless, interesting scientific discoveries) happen, and it's been an absolute public good.

This way, I can see how opting out of China's "race to the bottom" of cheaper-than-raw-materials PV production is a good. The paper acknowledges subsidies and tariffs are undesirable in a market, but goes on to point out "China did it first." It's not going to engender innovation by forcing American companies to compete, it's going to force American companies out of business. In this way, the R&D contract is broken--American taxpayers are paying for benefits that the Chinese private sector then reaps. Americans, then, will be less willing to invest in PV R&D. Since the Chinese are not actually investing in the blue-sky research next generation panels, and simply optimizing the production (and vastly subsidizing, and lowering the cost using the chinese taxpayers' money (this really isn't a case of "a country that can produce a good more easily selling to one where it is more difficult," it's a case of one country assisting its producers with market distortions more than another)), I can see how a protective tariff would keep "innovation," as defined by actual quantum leaps in the underlying science and thus large increases in efficiency, going. In this case. If the Chinese continue to be willing to simply capitalize on the research of others and unwilling to pay for blue-sky research themselves (and they don't have the institutions to even really carry it out), and if the US becomes unwilling to pay if they will reap the economic benefits. Thus, it doesn't get done. If I get the article properly, that's what they're worried about.

I think your difficulty is in the word "innovation." You're saying, basically, if the chinese can build the same mousetrap for cheaper, that's innovation. However, you're discounting the quantum leaps in materials technology that go into actual advances in PV cells. Lowering labor costs and materials costs and assembly costs is great, but it doesn't make a new "generation." Compare it to, say, the difference between a vacuum tube and a modern transistor. We can agree that transistors are vastly better. The science that allowed the first transistors to be built required a massive outlay of R&D capital, which basically just got lucky. In this alternate world, however, the Chinese are price-dumping extremely cheap vacuum tubes--this, potentially, could stop us from pumping the potentially-useless millions it will take to discover the basic science that leads to the transistor. What we'd have down the road, compared to reality, are really, really good (physically ideal!), really cheap vacuum tubes--and comparatively awful and gigantic computers. Because physically, any transistor can function in a tiny fraction of the area and with a tiny fraction of the power of the best possible vacuum tube. This is what, hypothetically, the next generation of solar cells the authors above are wringing their hands about could look like.

Your all-encompassing tariff crusade is inadequate to deal with a world where, yes, the only way to achieve technological breakthroughs is to spread the risk that millions in research will discover some really cool and totally useless physical phenomena over the entire tax base. It's also inadequate to deal with the fact that there already is a massive subsidy--one being applied by the Chinese government. Our tariff wouldn't simply be introducing a problem into a free market, but rather trying to recover from an imbalance already introduced by another government. I'm willing to argue whether or not it will create the imbalance, whether or not Chinese R&D has gotten to the point where they will be able to do the materials research necessary to actually use their business success to push the science forward, or whether or not the NSF will really stop funding PV materials research if they feel it'll just go to making Chinese companies rich.

However, I'm not willing to let stand your blanket "Well all tariffs are bad by definition so this one is bad."

What I don't think you're respecting enough is the amount of public R&D that needs to be pumped into literally any groundbreaking technological industry to make it really work. There are numerous industries--aerospace, anything with a microchip, and yes, renewable energy--where the only person with enough cash and no need for a return in the next 2 quarters is the taxpayer. "Blue sky research," which is desirable in every way, is not a good bet for any single company to make. It's a kind of inverse tragedy of the commons--instead of everyone taking advantage of something, nobody's going to disadvantage themselves by taking the risk that they'll pour millions into setting up a lab that produces nothing marketable. Universities, on the other hand, using grants from the government, do this all the time. By taxing the population to fund them, it spreads the risk over the entire market. That's how breakthroughs (and many, many useless, interesting scientific discoveries) happen, and it's been an absolute public good.

This way, I can see how opting out of China's "race to the bottom" of cheaper-than-raw-materials PV production is a good.

Your conclusion doesn't logically follow from what you've argued in your preceding paragraph. Even if we accept that paragraph as true (which I absolutely don't, but one thing at a time), it doesn't support the notion that accepting cheap Chinese-subsidized green energy equipment is bad. To begin with, government research money is essentially independent of whatever technology consumers are using at the moment, and a larger market of users would naturally lead to greater public acceptance of and support for such investment--right now, with green energy still a small niche which many if not most taxpayers are uninterested in (or actively hostile to) subsidizing, cheap Chinese PV products growing the market could be the best thing to improve public support for research investment. When people have the prospect of actually materially benefiting from technology, they tend to support investment; right now all that blue-sky research gives average taxpayers zero to show for it, which is why they don't respect or support it. What you support doing is keeping green energy an expensive, niche product with very limited public access driven only by limited government investment which the public doesn't support, instead of allowing it to become a mass-market commodity subject to all the market forces which constantly improve mass-market products as well as allowing it to gain public favor which may encourage more public backing of blue-sky research. Your position is illogical. It's only logical if your true interests are the protection of domestic producers as a special interest, not the advancement of the technology.

I listed several other reasons why cheap Chinese imports are essentially good in my first post, but perhaps the most important is the fact that the development of new intellectual property relating to green energy is largely independent of what's in the mass market at present. Research groups still have the same motivation to find breakthroughs, because IP related to next-gen products which yield significant improvement will still be just as valuable--perhaps more valuable, because the size of the market will have been much enlarged by those cheap Chinese products. Now, the argument that China is predatory when it comes to acquiring IP is a fair one, but is an entirely separate issue. If a product is illegally using IP, it should be banned from import entirely; but that isn't the case here--China pushes companies into licensing their IP by allowing or withholding access to Chinese markets or manufacturing capacity, or through other shenanegans which are predatory but not illegal (or if they are, they're issues for the WTO and are not soluble by tariffs). The only people who benefit from such tariffs are the American companies suckling at the taxpayer teat as a special interest group.

As for your argument about how cheap subsidized Chinese vacuum tubes would have prevented the transistor from ever having been developed, it's so naive it's shocking. Just how long do you think the Chinese would have continued dumping increasingly advanced/miniaturized and thus increasingly expensive vacuum tubes at a loss--for decades without end? Just how little do you think American research institutions and companies would have been interested in investigating materials properties and uses? Just how un-innovative do you think American companies would have been, that they'd still be happily using bulky vacuum tubes today? Corning developed Gorilla Glass decades before anything useful could be done with it, and that's not an aberration. Next-generation research gets carried on all the time, without the need for government subsidies or tariffs. Such market distortions serve special interests, not the public interest.

If someone isn't interested in science or engineering they're not going to pursue it. The job market has an excellent way of dealing with this. People who choose to get degrees in fields that we lack people have an easy time finding jobs.

In America today the demand for jobs far outstrips the supply.

Quote:

People who decide to get liberal arts degrees don't, and then proceed to complain about how they're being screwed by the world.

So get an engineering degree and let us know how well the job search went.

I appreciated that this article was fairly non-biased. Unsurprisingly, lots of supporters of renewable energy are quick to accuse the US of being a sore loser.

China's green subsidies probably won't hold up at the WTO. They make it impossible for non-subsidized companies to compete--no one else could possibly turn a profit at that price. Innovation won't solve the problem for companies in the United States either: China has never had much interest in Intellectual Property law (and certainly not in an international context), so it wouldn't be long before technologies developed in other countries starts coming out of China at subsidized prices.

Now, don't get me wrong--the US cheats at the international market game too--but no one gets away with quite as much as China. The tide looks like it's starting to turn against them, though, as most of the middle kingdom's neighbors in the east have been more than happy to back the US in its charge. The big question, I think, is where European leaders will start to fall on issues like this.

Innovation won't solve the problem for companies in the United States either: China has never had much interest in Intellectual Property law (and certainly not in an international context), so it wouldn't be long before technologies developed in other countries starts coming out of China at subsidized prices.

That's really not accurate when it comes to export products, because any products which China exports which fall afoul of others' IP would be subject to lawful complete import bans in the receiving country. It's true that Chinese products for their domestic consumption flout others' IP, and that China has been an "IP bully" by coercing foreign companies into IP-sharing agreements and technology transfers in order to gain access to Chinese markets and production capacity; however, the former is largely irrelevant when it comes to Chinese export products and the latter is coercive but not illegal (or if it is, it's a WTO matter). Point being, China cannot simply "steal" IP* developed in the U.S., and ship export products into the U.S. or other developed nations using that stolen IP, without those products being placed under total import bans by the receiving nations. So yes, next-gen IP matters, and Chinese dumping of current-gen products is irrelevant to that. None of those current-gen Chinese products violate the IP of others, and if they did they'd be banned entirely instead of placed under tariffs. To conflate IP issues with dumping is really to muddy the issues and chase red herrings.

*: Except of course for "trade secrets" which are unprotected by patent and other IP law. If something is unpatented or beyond the period of patentability, well, it's going to get leaked sooner or later...and probably should be.

American renewable energy sector is not the only one losing out because of China. I had stocks in REC, a Norwegian solar cell producer. Now most of that money is gone, because they say it is almost impossible to compete with Chinese manufactureres because they sell Solar cells for less than the price of raw material. Similar thing is apparently happening in Denmark. Their windpower industry is getting whiped out by the Chinese.

I am not sure I get this. I mean does it really make economic sense to drive out the competition by selling at great loss? I'd like to see some economist crunch the numbers on the Chinese strategy of undercutting the western companies on price until they are bust. Then they buy those bust companies at a low price and get their advance technology. Now they move up the chain and undercut other companies. When all the competition is dead they jack up the prices and make lots of profit.

If this really made economic sense I would have assumed that other companies did this.

You apparently haven't looked at history. Other companies have done and do this on a regular basis in this country and others.

One may well ask why the US, which spent 40 years denying global warming – and still is! – has any call to complain about unfair competition for renewable energy technology. We had the field to ourselves long before the Chinese had the wherewithal to compete. The fact is, the US oligarchs who deliberately destroyed the American middle class so they could grab ALL the money, not only sent all our factories to China, fair enough, but refused to allow any new ones to take their place. The chickens have come home to roost.